The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest

As you may know I’ve been working on a second edition of Veni Vadi Vici for several years, as part of my PhD work. I have completely rewritten the book, so much so that it has been re-titled as The Art of Sword Fighting in Earnest.

It is now available to buy in glorious full-colour hardback, which includes a facsimile of the manuscript, a new introduction, and a completely updated translation.

I made the translation available for free on gumroad; if you missed it, it’s here.

You can order the hardback from any bookshop, or on Amazon. It’s expensive though ($65) because of the whole full-colour hardback thing.

I am working on a black-and-white paperback version which will be about a third the price, and won’t have the facsimile built in. Expect that to be out in a few months.

If you have already bought Veni Vadi Vici, then I will be very happy to email you a link to download the 180mb colour pdf file of the new book. I think it’s only fair, as the new book was necessary to correct the errors in the first one. You shouldn’t have to pay extra to get the corrected text. Just send me an email and I’ll send you a download link for the print file. If you have friends that have Veni Vadi Vici please let them know that they can get the new book in pdf for free.

My security-minded friends will be having conniptions at the complete lack of suspiciousness in this approach. Yes, you could email me and lie about having bought Veni Vadi Vici, and I would still send you the pdf. Why? Because:

a) I trust my readers

b) if you need the book that badly and are so hard up you can’t buy it and are willing to lie to me to get it, then firstly, you should probably read my book on ethics, but secondly I’d rather you had the book than stewed in horrid ignorance

c) the cost in thought, time, and suspicious-mindedness necessary to create some kind of checking system is not worth the possibility that I might be doing myself out of a few book sales

d) I think it’s a good book. People who get the free pdf are more likely to go and buy the book in hardcopy.

At the end of the day, my fans won’t cheat me. What my non-fans do doesn’t matter.

UPDATE: This book hit #1 on Amazon… in the category “Medieval Literary Criticism”. So what? So it’s a really good idea to know what categories to put your book into. It is now, despite having sold perhaps 10 copies, forever and for all time a “Bestseller”.

Get your free 70-page sample here!

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